Wk 5 | Information/Materiality
"Virtuality is not about living in an immaterial realm of information, but about the cultural perception that material objects are interpenetrated with informational patterns" (p. 94).
Of the many places to begin with N. Katherine Hayles--post-WWII information rush, Myst [honestly, again?], taking on Shannon-Weaver, genes--I'm going to seize on proprioceptive coherence, or the electric fence of sorts that separates the virtual range from the material rancher.
She discusses the information/materiality dichotomy as related to the more traditional spirit/matter dichotomy, which for me raised a series of questions and quips. If information is the spirit, are we praying to a different kind of Holy Trinity in the 21st century? Further pushing this line of theistic information inquiry, do digital Buddhists seek a different kind of Nirvana, inspired by the desire to separate information (here, loosely "spirit") from matter? Can they achieve this, at least in their opinion, by immersing themselves so deeply within digital worlds, namely through extension of the body that marries itself to computer-based information?
Along a less spiritual line of inquiry, think about how Hayles focuses on the relationship we form as cyborgs (echoing Donna Haraway) with the computer with "proprioceptive coherence in interplay with electronic protheses," which creates a sense within a user that "her subjectivity is flowing into the space of the screen" (p. 92). Then, think about the implications of advanced haptics in HCI interface design, especially the notion that the keyboard and mouse will be obsolete in 3-5 years (according to Gartner analyst Steve Prentice, anyhow) -- how will that physical interaction with the computer screen extend our sense of proprioceptive coherence? how does it already with touch-screen ATMs or automated checkouts at Harris Teeter? Hayles writes that "when interface is keyboard and screen, space belongs to the computer, flow to the user" (p. 92, 93). Where does the flow belong with touchscreen interfaces? How do we demarcate space? In other, much darker sci-fi words, where does the computer stop and the human begin? I couldn't help but think here of The Matrix parts 2 and 3, in which Neo can affect the machines at the code level both in and out of the computer construct by becoming the physical embodiment of the code itself. He is information, but his advanced self still needs a husk, a shell to occupy in order to operate. In a very odd, Lanhamian (and Haylesian, I suppose) way, Keanu Reeves becomes the physical embodiment of an economy of attention: the only way to function in a hyper-information reality is to place limits and definable boundaries on that information, and I think that's an interesting correlation to the proprioceptive coherence that Hayles talks about.
What I lack right here is an interesting corollary to Wiener's half-cocked notions of automated control > human judgment. Written in 1956, it seems almost cute; read in 2008, in a time much closer to the legitimate birth of AI, it reads like the sub-plot of a bad futuristic doomsday technothriller (say, for example, Terminator's SkyNet, I, Robot's VIKI, or even the smarmy NORAD-controlling supercomputer that faces off against Matthew Broderick in War Games). I won't try to counter the points already raised by David and Zach--I largely agree with both of you--but I do think it's interesting to consider all of the ways in which we've already largely signed our judgments and decision-making authority over to the automated assessment algorithms of highly sophisticated technologies, especially those that we rely on to ensure our will is carried out even when we lack the available manpower to do so (I'm thinking here of the MAD principle of computer systems that can activate a nuclear counterstrike when the physical controllers of any given station may have been wiped out--I suppose that's a consequence of growing up so near the Dakotas, where multiple ICBM silos exist with these types of capabilities). My concern with Wiener's claim isn't so much the position he takes on it--that machines are always the better option to trust in emergency situations--but rather the certainty with which he makes it.
Exercising judgment certainly extends to our spiritual selves as informational selves, if I may bring back Hayles to introduce Lupton. The latter writes about cyberculture and the desire to "leave the 'meat' behind and to become distilled in a clean, pure, unocontaminated relationship with computer technology" (p. 100). If that isn't a neat interpretation of digital Buddhism and Information Age Enlightenment, I don't know what is. Lupton's account of the archetypal hackers and computer nerds (I take issue with this term, as I have my own discrete hierarchy for nerd, geek, and dweeb) demonstrates how the physical boundaries of our information spirit (i.e., bodies) are "inscribed upon and constructed through the computers [we] use" (p. 103). In some ways, hackers become the antithesis of the avatars they create to use in virtual worlds, rather than the avatars being an alternate projection of the meatsack that created them. The channel of representation is reversed if we accept Hayles' duality of information/materiality, and here I'm reminded of the power inversion that occurs with CyberFaustian "digital losers" that I brought up last week.
Given the thread of my dialectic here, I'm not sure how to fit in Hobart and Schifman's extensive coverage of Turing and von Neumann or the development of digital information in the developing information age. I too echo Zach's observation that tinkerers (early hackers, even?) like Turing or von Neumann were much more caught up in their respective machines' "overall logic and designed" than with the physical materials available/necessary to execute that logic. I suppose, in a way, that's the connection for me to Hayles and Lupton: logic (here, in various incarnations: "information," "digital spirituality") is that which transcends the physical boundaries of materiality (the Luptonian 'meatsack,' so to speak).
Alternate titles to the blog post:
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